Light Spring

Warm · light · moderately clear

Warm and light, with low contrast between your hair, skin and eyes. Colours that are clear but not heavy sit best.

The Light Spring palette

  • Peach
  • Buttercup
  • Mint
  • Coral pink
  • Aqua
  • Warm rose
  • Spring green
  • Cream

Neutrals

  • Ivory
  • Warm sand
  • Soft taupe

Three that fight it

  • Black
  • Deep aubergine
  • Cool slate

Three, not thirty. A palette is a prediction about which tones lift your face, not a list of banned colours — and a long avoid-list is the fastest way to make a useful idea useless.

What makes a Light Spring

Light Spring is warmth carried at low weight: fair skin with a golden or peach cast, light hair, and not much distance between the lightness of the hair and the lightness of the skin. The name misleads on one point — light does not mean pale in the sense of delicate. It means the whole colouring sits high on the value scale, so colours with weight in them read as heavier than the face.

Am I a Light Spring?

The two questions that decide it are temperature and value, in that order.

  • Hold a peach top and a soft pink one under your chin in daylight. If peach lifts the face and pink flattens it, you are on the warm side.
  • Now hold black. If it reads as a separate object sitting under your head rather than as part of the picture, your value is light.
  • Check your eyes at the rim: Light Springs usually have a warm ring — golden, amber or light hazel — rather than a grey or slate one.

Click to choose a photo, or drop one here

Straight-on, even lighting, at arm's length gives the most comparable reading.

No photo to hand? Try one of these and see what the tool returns.

Runs in your browser. Your photo is never uploaded.

Light Spring versus the seasons it is confused with

  • Light Summer

    Temperature. Both are light and low-contrast; Light Summer's skin reads pink or ashy where Light Spring's reads golden.

  • Bright Spring

    Contrast. Same warmth, but Bright Spring has real distance between hair and skin and can carry saturated colour; Light Spring cannot.

Light Spring makeup

Everything works at lower intensity than the packaging suggests.

  • Peach, coral and warm rose blush; cool berry tones read as bruised
  • Warm browns and soft golds on the eye, not charcoal
  • Brown or warm grey liner rather than black — black is the single most common mistake in this season
  • Lip shades one step warmer and lighter than you would instinctively pick

Hair colour for a Light Spring

Golden and honey blondes, light warm browns and strawberry tones. Ash blonde is the usual mistake — it drops the warmth the whole season is built on, and the result reads tired rather than cool.

Gold or silver?

Gold, in a light or brushed finish. Silver is not disastrous but it sits flat; rose gold works well.

How do I know if I am a Light Spring?

The two questions that decide it are temperature and value, in that order. Hold a peach top and a soft pink one under your chin in daylight. If peach lifts the face and pink flattens it, you are on the warm side. Now hold black. If it reads as a separate object sitting under your head rather than as part of the picture, your value is light. Check your eyes at the rim: Light Springs usually have a warm ring — golden, amber or light hazel — rather than a grey or slate one.

What colours suit a Light Spring?

Peach, Buttercup, Mint, Coral pink, Aqua and similar tones, with ivory, warm sand, soft taupe as the neutrals that carry them.

Should a Light Spring wear gold or silver?

Gold, in a light or brushed finish. Silver is not disastrous but it sits flat; rose gold works well.

What hair colour suits a Light Spring?

Golden and honey blondes, light warm browns and strawberry tones. Ash blonde is the usual mistake — it drops the warmth the whole season is built on, and the result reads tired rather than cool.

Light Spring or Light Summer?

Temperature. Both are light and low-contrast; Light Summer's skin reads pink or ashy where Light Spring's reads golden.

Light Spring or Bright Spring?

Contrast. Same warmth, but Bright Spring has real distance between hair and skin and can carry saturated colour; Light Spring cannot.

The other eleven seasons

Not sure which one you are? Measure your three axes — it runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.